Fellowships, Alliances, Networks, Denominations, and Collaborations:
Can We Get Along?
Nov. 19, 2024
Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell
Guest: Richard Bargas
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 11/19/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Jamie Mitchell: Hello friends and welcome to another Stand in the Gap Today. I am your host, Jamie Mitchell, director of church culture at the American Pastor’s Network. When I look back on 40 years of ministry, I can easily say that some of the most personally satisfying and impactful times were when I and the church I served, collaborated with other churches and ministries, whether it was starting a crisis pregnancy center in the late 1980s, linking arms with a number of churches to raise money for a village in Kenya stricken by HIV epidemic, or combining efforts with a hundred churches and businesses to stage a week long Good Works initiative to turn an entire city upside down. I can easily say that I’ve seen more accomplished together than I could have ever done by myself or by our church alone. Cooperative ministry is nothing new. We see its importance and effectiveness in missions, church planning, Christian schools, college campuses, and Christian camping.
Jamie Mitchell: It can be a powerful weapon if we can harness the resources and efforts of multiple ministries and ministers. Yet there are some downsides and dangers to connecting with other entities. Doctrinal issues, gospel clarity, reputation issues can arise if the groups of the people that you’re working with go off the rails and begin to drag you down with them. But in the long run, doing ministry with like-minded, like spirited brothers and sisters can expand the reach of the gospel and grow your impact. Today on Stand of the Gap, our program is entitled Fellowships, Alliances, Networks, Denominations, and Collaborations: Can We Get Along? and to help me sort out this issue, Dr. Richard Bargas is the executive director of IFCA International IFCA stands for Independent Fundamental Churches of America. It was begun in the 1930s in response to a theological modernism that was slipping to churches, pastors desiring to fellowship with those who had a similar burden together pushed back on that doctrinal drift. Today, IFCA plants churches sends missionary sponsors, military chaplains and host conferences and regional gatherings to continue fostering an interchurch collaboration. Richard, welcome to Stand In the Gap.
Richard Bargas: Hi, Jamie. Thanks. It’s great to be with you.
Jamie Mitchell: Well, Richard, you live in the world of cooperative ministry. You encourage pastors and churches to work together. Obviously, you must have thought a lot about the vitality of joining forces. Let’s start with the foundations of this discussion. Can you give us a biblical basis for doing ministry together? What does the Bible say regarding fellowshipping together?
Richard Bargas: Yeah, I mean, we are Bible people and so that’s a pretty important question to ask is we want to know if the Bible says something about it and I think it does. I see a lot of examples in the early church. Many of them can be found in the Book of Acts in the early history of the church. And as I think about it, there’s maybe three particular areas that stand out where cooperation in the early church was clearly happening. The first one I’d say was the church, and I don’t mean by that just like one individual church, but multiple churches in different locations cooperated in sending and funding missionaries and church planters like Paul and Barnabas. Paul and Barnabas are the first missionaries sent out by the church. They weren’t sent out interestingly, from the Jerusalem Church. They were sent out from Antioch, and yet even though they were sent out by Antioch, they were funded, helped along every place they went.
Richard Bargas: Everybody kind of participated in helping Paul and Barnabas as they moved throughout different countries in different locations and blessing many, many locations as they did that. So they cooperated with missionaries both sending in funding. A second place would be cooperation in Mercy Ministries. If you were to go to Act 11, you’d find they’re an example of sending aid from the church in Antioch to those that were needing it because of a drought that had caused a famine in Jerusalem. And so it was churches that were not connected formally in a denomination or any sense like that, but yet they felt the need. They had a bond that I think comes in Christ. So they helped one another. They sent money to provide food knowing that there was a great need there. And then the last place I’d say is in discussing things, especially doctrinal questions in councils for clarification, the Jerusalem Council is the first example you can find in the book of Acts.
Richard Bargas: In Acts chapter 15 where they needed to know what do we say to these new believers that happen to be Gentiles in regard to the law? How do we answer that question? And then a letter was written and it was sent back to those gentiles so that they could understand as the church discussed it, where they stood and what they were going to do about it. And so in those three ways there’s cooperation, and yet there was not a gigantic structure over it. It really was figuring out how can we minister together, how can we fellowship together without having a really strong structure over the top of it like you might find in modern day church systems today,
Jamie Mitchell: Richard, as I look at the early church and especially Paul’s influence on it, this whole idea of making sure the churches stuck together was really important for Paul. He constantly reminded him of the mission that they were on this mission together. It wasn’t just his mission, it was their mission. And so even like the Church of Philippa, I sometimes get myself in trouble and pastors and preachers, they kind of look at me, but I say to them, he wrote that book because they had stopped giving. They had stopped giving to the mission, they had infighting, they had problems there, and Paul needed them to be part of the mission and use their resources and partner together and even commence their partnership. And he says, look, you got to get your act together because you need to start giving because the mission is going to suffer if you don’t play a role in what God is doing through me and through our work together.
Jamie Mitchell: And so we see that exactly in regards to the church planting and mercy ministry and descending forth even doctrinal and theological correction. It was a cooperative effort. Friends, I think it’s important when we read the New Testament that we remind ourselves that there was never anybody who went it alone. Paul and the other apostles wrote to the churches who had a single-mindedness in regards to Christ and the church and his mission. And he encouraged each other personally and practically to work together to accomplish that work. That’s why we’re doing this program today. You may be out there today sitting in a church and you’re trying to go it alone. Yet there are churches in your towns and your cities and your counties that if you could link arms with them and you could do some ministry together, you could make an impact. Now, when we return, we’re going to examine some of the pitfalls of doing collaborative ministry together.
Jamie Mitchell: We want to encourage you, we want to challenge churches and pastors today, and we’re so thankful that we can have this conversation for the sake of the gospel, join back with us in just a few months mind. Well, thanks for staying with us as we discuss the why and the how of doing ministry together as Pastors Churches Ministries, Dr. Richard Bargas from IFCA International as our guest, Richard, I have many more great memories of doing ministry together with other pastors than I do negative ones. However, one bad experience can set you back for a long time and sometimes you can’t recover from that negative impact. Can you outline for us some potential problems that could occur when cooperating with other churches and ministries?
Richard Bargas: Yeah, I think there’s always potential with a wide range of problems because we are all people who struggle with pride and sin, so that’s just going to always be there. So we can’t let that push us off too much. But I think we can also jump into cooperation without considering a lot of important aspects, especially how it’s going to affect the sheep of our flock. Particularly. A couple problems that we should be aware of is that when we, sometimes something goes wrong and a problem arises, we have to ask, well, what or who is the final authority for us and for the ones we’re working with? And that’s true in an independent church or it’s also true with the denominational church since the domination might say one thing, the Bible might say something else. We need to ask ourselves, who in the end are we going to listen to if it’s a denomination or if we’re an independent church, where does our authority lie?
Richard Bargas: I think as far as those that are in our flock or if we’re a pastor, if we’re a church leader, we need to be careful because confusion might accompany churches that we’re working with that we might introduce into our church that we want to be aware of at least to know that we can educate everybody that’s going to be involved. So as far as confusion, I think if we have young Christians, and I think most churches have young, immature Christians, they might not be able to discern the differences between doctrinal differences that are important between our churches. They may not be primary, it may be a gospel church, but they may look at that other organization or that other church that we want to work with, work alongside. And there might be things that we aren’t comfortable with in our own tradition in our own church, things like women pastors or the use of charismatic gifts or other things like that.
Richard Bargas: They’re not primary, but they are very important. And young Christians might get confused if they don’t understand. And so we might need to think about that ahead of time. Another way we can introduce confusion as if we cooperate with unbelieving groups including cults. So if we cooperate with say, Roman Catholic or Mormon folks at our local abortion clinic, for example, will some people see that the Mormons claims to be Christian is legitimate? They might if they’re not taught well or if they’re immature believers or will our Roman Catholic neighbors think the gospel that we believe as Protestants is the same as the one that their priest teaches? So we might be introducing some confusion there. And then the third way we might be seeing some confusion is regarding how we practically carry out our cooperative efforts. How do we go about doing the practical part of our ministry, whatever that might be as we’re thinking about working with others.
Richard Bargas: So they might say, we want to do this. Do we protest? Do we march around a city and cast out the demons? Do we boycott? We might want to think about if we’re going to go out and share Christ with others and do evangelism. There’s different evangelistic styles, even doctrinal differences within different Christian groups. And that can be confusing for a lot of Christians if we don’t work through those challenges beforehand. So I don’t think they’re insurmountable, but I think we need to think about them. And one last area that might introduce confusion regarding our goals. When we cooperate, what are we wanting to see accomplished? Are we wanting to see people one to Christ and salvation be the end result? Are we addressing cultural decay? Is this something that we’re wanting to push back advances of darkness in our community? Are we wanting to reinstate common morality?
Richard Bargas: Is that what we’re trying to do? I mean, we can come at it with one intent and the groups that we’re working at can come at it from a different angle and we might end up in different places and that could cause some problems. So I think having good conversations with our own church and our leaders and the people within that are going to be cooperating and then with those that we’re planning on doing it with, the more unified you are, the easier it is to fellowship. The less unified you are, the more potential there are for problems.
Jamie Mitchell: As you were speaking, I thought to myself, if you don’t take the time and even explain the differences of some of the ministries or churches, but doing collaborative ministry, it does give you that opportunity to say, Hey, look, we’re going to be involved with this other church. Here is kind of where they believe on some issues. This is where we differ. But for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of advancing ministry, for the sake of dealing with things like you mentioned pro-life issues, we are going to cooperate with them, but we want you to know what the differences are and that we’re not compromising what we believe by doing this. Richard, I want to go a little deeper though on this subject. You can’t expect that you will share complete like-mindedness with everybody, but you must get the gospel right and avoid more controversial issues. What are some controversial theological issues that might arise as a point of conflict in more of a specific way?
Richard Bargas: Well, some examples of controversial issues really started to come out really strongly during the COVID-19 restrictions that expose a lot in our churches to issues related to politics and the role of the government and the church. Now, covid restrictions of course are gone for the most part, but the controversy lives on, and I don’t think we should avoid it, but we need to press into it with the word of God as our authority. So when we do this, we’re going to need to really examine what the Bible says. And along those lines, I see the rising up of post-millennial theology, Christian nationalism, and there’s a wide range of definitions for Christian nationalism. There’s some that just meant to provoke us. And then there are some things that really we need to look at more closely and examine it and see whether it lines up with scripture.
Richard Bargas: But I think we need to be careful that we don’t just jump the gun and assume that there’s a lot of fear mongering out there. And I think we need to be because I think some brothers and sisters that would be right in line where we are would be labeled Christian nationalists by others. So I’d add also that there’s a need to talk biblically about the attractional model of ministry and the rise of Christian celebrity culture that’s come from the conference speaking circuit and social media where cultivating an online presence takes precedence over godliness within the context of the local church. And those last two that I just mentioned have caused some Christians to cooperate within a pseudo church context online where they follow their favorite podcaster and conference speakers and somehow they think that that’s a replacement for their involvement and accountability in the local church. So those are points of conflict that need to be really thought about. They’re controversial issues. Celebrity pastor, the online presence that’s not the church, and it can lead to some disastrous results. So I think we need to think through those as well.
Jamie Mitchell: Oh, it’s funny is I remember I was just in the middle of preaching, this is years ago on the issue of prayer, and I was really hammering away at the whole notion that when we pray, we pray to the Father, we pray in Jesus’ name, but we pray to the Father. And then I also made a point of saying that I hear so many people use the phrase, when two or more are gathered in my name in the context of prayer, I’ve made a point of saying to our congregation that was a context of church discipline. So when you hear people talking about that, it’s really a church discipline thing. Well, we were doing some cooperative ministry and one of the pastors got up, he prayed out, dear Jesus, and he prayed as we gathered together two or more in your name, and some of my people looked over at me saying, Hey, you probably send your last message on prayer to that pastor. But those are comical things, Richard. But there’s sometimes that some of these things do become sticky points like style of ministry or style of programming or music preferences or even fashion choices. How do you kind of navigate those things? We got about a minute or so left. How do we navigate those things when we’re trying to bring churches and ministries together?
Richard Bargas: Yeah, Jamie, a lot of those are local church issues and as far as our association, IFC is concerned, we leave those for the local church to wrestle with. God gave us the church, he didn’t give us denominations or associations, and so within the church he gave us pastors and elders to guide the church under the authority of the word of God. So if a local church leadership team doesn’t feel comfortable working with another church because of their music styles or some other secondary issue, that’s fine. That’s their choice and we need to be careful. We don’t draw that circle too tight, but elders are called to shepherd the flock among them. So we need godly discerning men to lead the church so they can be wise in those relationships. I’d recommend your listeners get ahold of a chart. A couple of friends of mine, Ken Chip Chase and Jeremy Howard put together, it’s called the Chart. It’s a theological triage chart. You can see that although theology is important, not all theological issues carry the same weight of importance. They’re armed with wisdom about what’s non-negotiable and what we can differ on while maintaining fellowship. And that’s important. You can find that chart@duketheology.com. But that’s necessary I think for us to help people think theologically through these issues that you’re talking about.
Jamie Mitchell: The young person, our youth group did some cooperative ministry and this one church that was kind of unknown to the other pastors, we showed up for a youth rally and the youth rally was going to happen in the sanctuary. Well, this church we didn’t know had a no genes in the sanctuary rule, and so nearly half of the young people were stuck out in the lobby listening to the youth event. And so obviously those kinds of things might happen. They may cause tension, they may cause strife, but you got to work through them just like marriage and other relationships. There’s a need for give and take compromise, being willing to give up on some preferences if it’s going to accomplish cooperation and unity and pulling resources together to make an impact when we come back. What are some essentials for fruitful fellowship among churches? We’re talking about collaborative ministry.
Jamie Mitchell: Can we get along for the sake of the gospel? Well, hearing Sam talk about his book, I’m reminded that that book really came out of another piece of work that he did called the Letter from God, and that then gave birth to our Return to God Sunday in 2025, which is right around the corner. February 2nd, 2025 is again going to be the fourth return to God Sunday. I want to encourage you to encourage your pastor, you’re going to be hearing more about it in programs in the next coming weeks, but that’s going to be an important day and there may be opportunity to do some collaborative ministry. And that’s what we’re doing today. Today we’re trying to answer the question, can we get along? And we are discussing with Richard Bargas the possibility and the potential impact of joining together with churches and pastors. These collaborations could be a local ministerium where you strategize how to reach your town or county or city with the gospel or to have greater global reach by being part of a network or association of churches. And here at the American Pastors Network, we believe and encourage cooperative ministry and that’s why we’re devoting this hour to discuss how and we could do God’s work together. Richard, before we continued, I want you to take a minute and tell our listeners about IFCA, what you’re doing, how they can find out about your fellowship and what would be an advantage of being a part of a group like IFCA?
Richard Bargas: Sure. I’d be happy to. IFCA is a worldwide fellowship of individuals, churches and organizations. We do have a formal membership. It began in 1930 here in the Midwest in the Chicago area, Cicero, Illinois. And it was put together because folks are coming out to denominations that have become apostate and we’re teaching contrary to the fundamentals of the faith. And these that gathered together remain faithful to the word of God and to those fundamentals. And so they needed to work together to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ, but they didn’t want to be in a denomination that in their experience have forced them or at least tried to force them to do things that they felt were unbiblical and to deny doctrines that they felt were true. And so we are part of that whole heritage and we’re united around a doctrinal statement. We all agree to annually when we renew our commitment, cooperating in a lot of ministry areas, knowing that the average church is about a hundred people.
Richard Bargas: That’s the normal church. So if you have a little church that’s normal, all the other gigantic megachurches, it’s kind of an abnormality of our time. But because we’re a bunch of little churches, oftentimes we need to cooperate in ministry areas. And so IFCA provides for all of our members ways to do that. Youth, women’s ministry mentoring, local, regional fellowship chaplaincy including military chaplaincy, but all other kinds of chaplaincy as well. We have missions agencies and education including bible colleges, seminaries universities and church planting wings. And if you want to find more about what we believe how to become a member or just read a little bit, we’ve got all kinds of resources that are free on our website. You can find that@ifca.org. And so that’s a great, great ministry. I’m very happy. I’ve been a member. I was a member long before I became the executive director as a pastor out in Southern California for about 25 years, and I really appreciate the deep roots and their strong stand. We haven’t moved, we’re almost 95 years old. Next year we’ll be 95 and we haven’t moved doctrinally and that can’t say that about a lot of groups, but proud to be an IFCA member who hasn’t moved in any of those important issues.
Jamie Mitchell: Well, self-disclosure, a card caring member of IFCA and so appreciate their spirit and the friendships that I’m developing. Richard, as I look around at cooperative ministry that is most impactful, there must be some common things that make for effectiveness and most importantly fruitfulness. Can you give us maybe three or four that pastors and churches should do to make for a great experience when they’re licking arms with other ministries?
Richard Bargas: Yeah, I think there are some things that you can do and I think they’re necessary. They get us above the fray of the things that kind of divide but aren’t as important. I would say if you’re looking to cooperate, and I think you’ve already mentioned it about ministerium and things, I would say that it’s important to set aside time to pray for one another. If we all are part of the body of Christ, we can do that. First of all, without even being connected to any other groups as a church, your church can pray for other local churches. You don’t have to cooperate with them in that way. You just need to pray for them. And if you can, if you’re able to find somebody that you fit well with, you can gather together to pray for other pastors in your community. I think prayer is powerful.
Richard Bargas: I think prayer unifies Jesus, even in his high priestly prayer, talked about this unity that we desire. And so I think what you see as an essential where there’s good experiences that it’s very spiritually foundationally built on prayer. I’d also say when you’re making plans, as you’re thinking about this joint ministry where you can fellowship and where you can do something functionally together in that ministry, so opportunities that you could do would include like a Christmas or a Easter or a Good Friday service. You just get together with other churches where maybe you help each other, maybe one church does music, another church hosts it at their facility, another church preaches whatever. You could do VBS or even Bible clubs at the public schools. You could have youth camp, family camp. Lots of churches get together to run their own camp on maybe a piece of land that somebody in the church donates.
Richard Bargas: That’s where most of our Bible camps began was by churches cooperating together and then putting on the programming and then usually just popping some tents up out in the middle of a field and eventually began to build things. You can also do conferences together as part of joint ministry. And I think when you have a goal, I have found that when we’re all focusing on the same goal, we don’t have a lot of time or energy to squabble about things. And so I think finding a good goal to achieve together is very helpful and in many ways essential for working together with other people. The emphasis is on the work, not the other people. And then I think the third thing I would say is share resources. Again, you’re working together, but you’re more focused on the gospel ends resources. We as churches in America don’t realize that we are massively blessed with what we have, even if we’re a little small poor church, at least we think of ourselves that way.
Richard Bargas: IF say is international and we have member churches all over the place and they’re just so poor in many areas and we have so much and we don’t even realize it. And so if you hear that other churches nearby need something, you can cooperate without even mingling about doctrine and things by just sharing with them, you can share with them your pulpit. That doesn’t mean that they necessarily preach in your pulpit. You preach when they’re some kind of pulpit swap, but you could. But I know for us, we often trained up young men and they needed a place to preach and if a pastor was so small, his little church didn’t have somebody to preach for him so he could take a day off. We could send a guy out there and let him preach for them and get a little practice and give that pastor an opportunity to get away for a weekend.
Richard Bargas: You can get together for training and sharing resources. You may have somebody that’s especially trained in different areas. Maybe there’s a CEF person in your church that could train Sunday school teachers or a guy that’s good on church security that could train other churches in the area on that. You could share resources in doing conferences together or maybe you’d throw a conference, but you invite the local churches so everybody doesn’t have to do their own conference. You could share musicians your church may not have. I remember being in a church, my dad was a pastor and we didn’t have a piano player for years and good thing acapella. And if a local church had heard that we needed a musician, we needed a guitar player, a piano player. I know the church I’m at now, we have multiple musicians that some Sundays they’re doing nothing.
Richard Bargas: They have to rotate them, send them to another church that has no musician. You can share your VBS decorations, share your vehicles that are sitting there all week, share the workers that you’ve got like teams to come clean a church or evangelism teams to go out into a neighborhood and share. All of those are focusing on stuff we have that we can partner with other churches to give, and we’re not even talking theology and doctrine at that point. All of those are essential. If you have that mindset of I want to further the gospel of Jesus Christ, then that really helps you get off on a good start and then you can talk about those important theological issues as you get a little deeper into theological ministry. But initially just to bless other churches in your community. You could start there and not compromise in any way because you’ve done what is necessary for furthering the gospel of Jesus.
Jamie Mitchell: Richard, one of the essentials that I want you to address, and it’s woven through a lot of what you’ve already said, but the fact of the matter is if pastors, if the key leader, if the strategic leader of each church does not have some kind of relationship with the other pastors, the likelihood of pulling churches together and doing cooperative ministry is not going to really happen. We’re going to probably run out of time, but you see that all the time, don’t you? That pastors got to be the ones initiating these relationships.
Richard Bargas: Yeah, I think it’s an important aspect of knowing what the Bible speaks about. When you’re talking about separation, there’s biblical separation and then there is an unbiblical separation. Biblical separation has to do with theology, it has to do with apostasy. We separate from those that are worldly, that are unholy, that are ungodly, that are in wickedness and sin. They call themselves Christians and they really are not. So I think that most pastors would easily be able to discern whether that church down the street simply disagrees with them on speaking in tongues or they’re in apostate church that actually is promoting wicked doctrines that are doctrines of demons. And I think if you say, well, that’s a wicked doctrine, don’t partner with them. Don’t share your resources.
Jamie Mitchell: Hey, hold on, Richard, when we return some long-term benefits to working together, we’ll finish up this wonderful conversation about cooperative ministry here at Stand In the Gap. Well, thank you again for entrusting us with an hour of your day. Richard Bargas is our guest and we’ve been considering doing ministry together and how to create healthy, effective, fruitful networks, alliances, fellowships. You pick the name and choose the purpose, but we believe churches and pastors need to be doing ministry together for the sake of Christ. Richard, you were just finishing up a thought on pastors not separating themselves, but seeking out fellowship with each other. You can follow up and finish on that thought if you would like, but also as we enter this closing segment, can you share some testimonies of fruitful collaborative ministry and really the long-term benefits of moving in this direction intentionally doing some ministry together with other churches and ministries?
Richard Bargas: Sure, yeah. Yeah. I think what I was saying at the last segment as far as separation as we have to be careful, especially as these days grow darker, that we don’t cut ourselves off from the rest of the body of Christ unnecessarily. If it’s clear that another church or another organization has embraced what God is against, then we definitely need to make those hard calls. We need to find a reason to separate though I don’t think we start with, we’re going to separate with everybody. That’s not identical to us, but I think instead we need to look at what can we do to stay together as much as possible? What can we overlook? Not overlooking sin, but overlooking differences that we can still work around, we can figure out how to cooperate and accomplish what Jesus wants us to accomplish. And I have so many examples.
Richard Bargas: It’s exciting for me to even think about it, of fruitful alliances. The first one that popped in my head was Brooks Bible College is out in St. Louis, Missouri, and it’s an old school, and it was a Bible institute when it initially started, and then it became a Bible college. It’s now an accredited Bible college, and they were in a pretty undesirable part of the city, and it made it really hard for students because of safety issues. And they were looking for how they could move their campus. South County Bible Church, which is an IFCA church in St. Louis had the facilities where they could share a major part of their large building complex with Brooks Bible College. So Brooks sold its property. They went in together, they worked out a deal where Brooks was able to move into the lower level of the church building and put out money to renovate the whole thing.
Richard Bargas: It’s got a beautiful library and classrooms and everything, and so they’re cooperating together. The pastor of South County is on the board of directors with Brooks, the president of Brooks is also an IFCA member himself. And it’s just been a great cooperation. And some of the fruit of that is that this solid Bible school is able to continue to produce people who are trained in the word of God. Not all of them going into ministry, many of them are layman, but just to strengthen the body of Christ as they learn the word of God, the church is also benefiting because not only is that area of the church where they weren’t using it as much, but they are able to send all of their members that want to get further education in the Bible to Brooks and to be able to do that right there on their own location.
Richard Bargas: It’s a wonderful, wonderful deal, and they’re in a much nicer facility, a much nicer location than they had been before. Another example is IFC does church planting as well, and they just put together a new grant for new churches called the Spray Grant. It’s going to be kicking off in the new year, and one of the churches that was just planted not that long ago is called Redeemer Bible Church in Springfield, Ohio. The pastor there, the church planting pastor’s name is Reed Wagoner. And that church was a cooperation of our church planting extension called Midwest Church Extension and Berea Bible Church, which is located there in Springfield as well. So Springfield, Ohio is a large kind of a suburban part of Ohio, and there was a new area that they wanted to reach. It was growing young families, new houses, and they weren’t really able to reach it because it was so geographically distant from Bea Bible Church.
Richard Bargas: So they wanted to plant a church. They got together with a church planting extension, and they started this church. Redeemer Bible Church just had its one year anniversary, and it’s been a blessing to see how they’re reaching people for Jesus Christ in this new community. They may not go over to the other church that helped them plant it. And then one last one is I have a friend, a pastor friend in Maryland. His name is Ken Burge, and Ken writes these incredible bible study books with the acronym fire in all of them, FIRE, which is his Bible study method that he came up with. And he wanted to get these books that he writes into the hands of Spanish speaking readers. So he called me up and we were talking about it, and I connected him with Rio Grande Bible Ministries, which is an IFCA organization down in Texas down at the Point Tip of Texas in Edenburgh, Texas.
Richard Bargas: And I told him, get ahold of them. Call and speak to their president who’s a good friend and see if they’ve got anybody there at that school that can translate for you. Because Rio Grande not only educate students to take the gospel and plant churches all over the Spanish speaking world, but they also are a translation school. So non-Spanish speakers learn how to speak Spanish there at Rio Grande. So Ken called up and talked to the president there and he found somebody that could translate his book. So the book got translated into Spanish and it’s been published and printed and everything. So now these really good Bible studies are produced in another language so that it can go out and help the Spanish speaking world with the gospel of Jesus Christ as well. So there’s three examples, and the benefits of all three of those are going to be long-term.
Richard Bargas: Brooks is going to keep sending out students that graduate and possibly send some off to seminary to go and pastor churches, Reed’s Church Redeemer is going to keep preaching the gospel in a place where it’s such a new community. There’s not many churches at all. And then of course, Ken Burg’s book is going to go out into the Spanish speaking world and educate people on the book of Ephesians and how to study it for themselves. So those are just three examples, and I could give you a whole bunch more, Jamie. These are wonderful blessings of cooperation between very different types of ministries, and yet all of them have that same focus of getting the word of God out to the world in different ways.
Jamie Mitchell: Richard, when putting this program together, my mind went back decades of ministry. I remember the very first church I went to in the Philadelphia area. I showed up and I was told that we do a cooperative Good Friday service. And I find out that there were seven churches that gathered together every good Friday. They’d been doing it for years. Each of the pastors took one of the seven last statements of Christ. He preached a 10, 12 minute sermon, they had different ones. And it became such a wonderful example of what the church could do together. And I guess as we’ve been talking here and we’ve just got less than a minute left, what’s said is that I think people are impressed when they hear Christians doing things together instead of fighting each other. And Richard, I just want to thank you so much for being with us today and your time and your effort to mobilize God’s people to work together and to make an impact.
Jamie Mitchell: And that’s what we’re talking about today. Friends, I want you to talk to your pastor, church leader, fellow church member, and ask them this question, who can we do ministry together with in our town, our city, our county, and why aren’t we doing it? And to encourage them to listen today’s program, to reach out to Richard Bargas and to IFCA. Now, to do that, you’re going to need some courage. And as I always say at the end of my program is live and lead with courage. The world is wrought with fear and cowardice. The church needs to be courageous, and doing collaborative ministry can be one of the most courageous things you can do. Thanks again for being with us. See you again tomorrow for another Stand in the Gap today.
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